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I encourage our audience to read Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed, a book that deals in systematic fashion with the techniques of self-delusion and manipulation of the public, of which the global warming scare is a significant contemporary instance, as Richard Lindzen explains in the below video clip. In the last chapter of Sowell's book, "Optional Reality," the author observes:
The vision of the anointed (less charitably known as statist do-gooders) has become
independent of empirical evidence. That is what makes it dangerous, not because a particular set of policies may be flawed or counterproductive, but because insulation from evidence virtually guarantees a never-ending supply of policies and practices fatally independent of reality. This self-contained and self-justifying vision has become a badge of honor and a proclamation of identity: To affirm it is to be one of us and to oppose it is to be one of them. Moreover, the pervasiveness of the vision of the anointed at all levels of the American educational system ensures future supplies of people indoctrinated with this vision and also convinced that they should "make a difference"--that public policy-making is to be seen as ego gratification from imposing one's vision on other people through the power of government.
From: Sowell, T. (1995), The Vision of the Anointed. Self-Congratualtion as a Basis for Social Policy, New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 241
The inestimable Richard Lindzen on "what happens to science in the public square."
Apologies: for some reason the video commences 9 minutes into the lecture, to get to the start (which you should not miss) you will have to adjust the time mark manually.
See also Against Political Biology.
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